Electronic typewriters have memory storage for the storing of text. As this text has been played out in the past, the operator normally was required to insert the necessary stop codes in the text string in order to terminate playout of the text at the desired point where the text would need to be divided for pagination.
If the text is edited in any way that changes the position of the words in the text and the number of lines of text in the document, the stop code previously inserted in the text will cause the termination of printing either too early or too late to properly end the text at the desired place on the page.
For the document to have a pleasing and proper appearance, the operator must, after the editing, repaginate by removing stop codes and reinserting the new stop codes into the text string at the required points.
Some electronic typewriters have the ability to count the number of lines of text printed onto the page and to terminate the text when the page is filled to the preselected limit.
However, when the page termination is solely controlled by line count, the page may have a single line of text from a paragraph beginning left standing alone at the bottom of a page, or all of a paragraph being printed at the bottom of a page except the last line of the paragraph which will then appear by itself at the beginning of the next page. These two conditions are referred to as "orphans" and "widows" and detract from the aesthetics of the finished document.